Play for Today: Series 12
Season 12 Lore Primer
Key plot threads, lore context, and character stakes you need to remember before diving into this season.
- Directly follows the overarching narrative developments of Play for Today Season 11.
- Faction dynamics and core character alliances shift under escalating external stakes.
- Crucial mysteries introduced previously reach key turning points and narrative reckonings.
- Sets up serialized story arcs that build directly toward the climactic season finale.
Episode Guide
Season 12 Progress Shield
Country
Oct 20, 1981 · 75 min
The story of the disintegration of an aristocratic country estate after World War II
London Is Drowning
Oct 27, 1981 · 75 min
A docudrama about what would happen if London was hit by severe flooding
A Room for the Winter
Nov 3, 1981 · 75 min
James, an expatriate South African anti-apartheid fighter, deals with his nightmares and his complaining landlady in a run-down area of London, while dreaming of his lover Stephen,
No Visible Scar
Nov 17, 1981 · 75 min
A nurse is subjected to an interrogation after giving medical treatment to a terrorist leader.
Iris in the Traffic, Ruby in the Rain
Nov 24, 1981 · 75 min
In Belfast, Ruby has a cold and is caught in the rain while Iris is looking for work and gets caught in traffic
Protest
Dec 1, 1981 · 75 min
In an adaptation of Václav Havel's play, a dissident, newly released from prison for political reasons, attempts to get his well-connected friend to sign a protest. In this one man
United Kingdom
Dec 8, 1981 · 75 min
Two men on a local council fight the system when forced with massive spending cuts.
PQ17
Dec 15, 1981 · 75 min
During World War II, a British officer is ordered to abandon a Russian convoy.
The Factory
Dec 22, 1981 · 75 min
A manager, a foreman, and two workers are all that remains of a factory yet labor relations stay the same
England's Green and Pleasant Land
Jan 5, 1982 · 75 min
A planning decision must be made, and the motorway extension must go through on either the Golf Course or the Allotments - will the greens survive or the peasant lands?
A Cotswold Death
Jan 12, 1982 · 75 min
A police inspector investigates the murder of an Arab sheik who had become a village's Lord of the Manor.
Under the Skin
Jan 19, 1982 · 75 min
Three women involved in different ways in the women's movement.
Commitments
Jan 26, 1982 · 75 min
Politics and relationships during the last years of the Heath government
Life After Death
Feb 2, 1982 · 75 min
Meg: We were so close, we loved each other, we made a whole together. I feel cut in half.
The Silly Season
Feb 9, 1982 · 75 min
Malcolm goes through life hating the mundanity of his existence as a factory worker and an unloved husband. But when students take up summer jobs at the factory, it reawakens both
Too Late to Talk to Billy
Feb 16, 1982 · 75 min
A family in Belfast deals with life after the death of the mother from cancer
Willie's Last Stand
Feb 23, 1982 · 75 min
Willie and his friends notice the passage of time around them, and how society is changing as their marriages stagnate. Can Willie prove to himself that he still has it, by being a
Tishoo
Mar 9, 1982 · 75 min
Frank has dedicated 19 years to researching a cure for the common cold, and is almost ready to publish a paper. Yet budget cuts and his own inability to form real relationships wit
Home Sweet Home
Mar 16, 1982 · 88 min
Three postal workers and their dysfunctional families interact over cups of tea and Sunday dinner. Home Sweet Home is a 1982 television film devised and directed by Mike Leigh, for
A Sudden Wrench
Mar 23, 1982 · 75 min
"My life is over - and I just didn't notice it passing." A call to a radio helpline leads to depressed housewife Christine finding a new direction in life.
Eve Set the Balls of Corruption Going
Mar 30, 1982 · 75 min
Adolescents will always be obsessed by the same old subject, even when they are educated by nuns. Six ex-Classmates meet for the first time in 12 years and hilarious memories chang
Whistling Wally
Apr 6, 1982 · 75 min
While Wally was happy there wasn't much wrong with the world, and pints seemed a small price to pay for what he gave us. But don't forget what we gave him. We gave him the knowledg